Allori was born at
Florence and received his first lessons in painting from his father,
Alessandro Allori, but becoming dissatisfied with the hard anatomical drawing and cold coloring of the latter, he entered the studio of
Gregorio Pagani, who was one of the leaders of the late Florentine school, which sought to unite the rich coloring of the
Venetians with the Florentine attention to drawing. Allori also appears to have worked under
Cigoli. When still young he became a court portraitist for the Medicis, though many of his commissions were replicas of portraits by his predecessor
Bronzino, or had participation by others. His pictures are distinguished by their close adherence to nature and the delicacy and technical perfection of their execution. His technical skill is shown by the fact that several copies he made of
Correggio's works were thought to be duplicates by Correggio himself. His extreme fastidiousness limited the number of his works. Several examples are to be seen at Florence and elsewhere. His most famous work, in his own day and now, is
Judith with the Head of Holofernes. It exists in at least two versions by Allori, of which the
prime version is perhaps that in the British
Royal Collection, dated 1613, with various
pentimenti. A version of 1620 in the
Palazzo Pitti in Florence is the best known and there are several copies by studio and other hands. There is one copy painted in 1613 in the Vatican Pinacoteca and one in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin. Strangely, the caption for this copy in Berlin says it may have been painted in 1610 or 1615. Then this copy was painted before the so-called prime version painted in 1613 in the British Royal Collection. According to the near-contemporary biography by
Filippo Baldinucci, the model for the
Judith was his former mistress, the beautiful "La Mazzafirra" (who is also represented in his
Magdalene), the head of
Holofernes is a self-portrait, and the maid is the mother of "La Mazzafirra." == Gallery ==